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Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot
were convicted of murdering Denice Haraway. Haraway, 24, worked
part-time at McAnally’s convenience store in Ada, Pontotoc County,
Oklahoma,, USA.
She was last seen leaving the store on April 28, 1984, with a man
who had his arm around her waist. The two appeared to be a pair of
lovers. The store was found deserted with the cash register drawer
opened and emptied. Haraway’s purse and driver's license were found
inside, and her car nearby.

Months later, with Haraway still missing, police questioned
Tommy Ward, who resembled the man who had accompanied Haraway from
the store. After days of interrogation, Ward confessed to the
crime. On the day that he "confessed" he had been interrogated for
over 8 hours and was exhausted. He also implicated his friend, Karl
Fontenot, and Odell Titsworth, a man he never met. During the
videotaped confession, Ward frequently forgot Titsworth’s name and
called him “Titsdale.” Ward said the three gang-raped Haraway,
murdered her with Titsworth’s knife, and dumped and burned her body
near Sandy Creek.

Fontenot was soon arrested and confessed after only two hours of
interrogation. His confession was similar to Ward’s but
contradicted it on many details, such as the order in which the
three raped Haraway, and the location and number of her stab
wounds. Fontenot said the three brought Haraway into an abandoned
house, where Titsworth poured gasoline over her body and burned
down the house. Ward had mentioned a burned down house in an
earlier unrecorded confession, and police knew it existed.

Titsworth was arrested, but he had broken his arm two days
before the murder in a fight with police. Medical and police
records made him an unlikely suspect, and he was never charged with
murder. While police were sifting through the remains of the burned
down house, the owner appeared. After police told him of Fontenot’s
confession, the owner said Fontenot’s story was impossible, as he
himself had burned down the house 10 months before the murder.

At trial, the prosecutor presented the confessions and was
forced into the position of telling the jury the defendants were
lying about details while asking the jury to believe them anyway.
Two jail-house informants supplemented the confessions. One said
Ward confessed, while the other said he overheard Fontenot talking
to himself, saying, “I knew we’d get caught. I knew we’d get
caught.” The jurors returned with guilty verdicts and death
penalties.

Haraway’s body was found January 20, 1986 in Gerty, Hughes
County, Oklahoma, far from any place that was searched. She had not
been stabbed or burned, but died from a single gunshot to the
head.

The case attracted the attention of New York journalist Robert
Mayer, who published a book about the case entitled The Dreams
of Ada. Novelist John Grisham cited Mayers' book in his
first non-fiction effort, best-seller The Innocent Man. Grisham pointed out
disturbing commonalities between the Haraway case and another case
central to his book, which addressed the investigation,
prosecution, conviction, and long-delayed exoneration of two men
(Ronald 'Ron' Keith Williamson and Dennis Fritz) wrongly convicted of the
December, 1982 rape-murder of Ada resident Debra Sue Carter.

In 2007, former Pontotoc County District Attorney, William N.
("Bill") Peterson and former investigator Gary Rogers
unsuccessfully sued Grisham and others for libel.[1]
Grisham's co-defendants included Mayers, Fritz (who co-authored the
book Journey Toward Justice with Grisham), several
publishers, and attorney Barry Scheck (co-director of The
Innocence Project, one of the lawyers who helped exonerate
Fritz, and a co-author of Actual Innocence, which
discusses the Williamson and Fritz case).[2]
Peterson maintains a website he calls "Grisham's Folly,"[3] that
purports to tell "The Truth Behind "The Innocent Man" [sic] &
Ada, Oklahoma" and posts the various letters exchanged between
Grisham and him and editorial articles from "the Ada Evening
News and the Daily Oklahoman [that] highlight
problems with Grisham's book."

In dismissing the libel case, U.S. District Judge Ronald White
stated that the books written by Grisham, Mayers, and books were
substantially true.

While other similar cases, such as those of Ron Williamson and
Dennis Fritz, have been dismissed by DNA evidence, the absence of
biological evidence against Ward and Fontenot precludes the use of
DNA to exonerate them. The only evidence against them is
contradictory confessions extracted by police, which have been
demonstrated to be unreliable, and claims made by alleged
jail-house snitches.

Ward and Fontenot are currently still in prison. Ward is serving
a life sentence and Fontenot is serving a life sentence without
parole.